An incomplete history of times when Allofmp3 was thought be doomed.
Feb 22, 2005: "Russian music site targeted by law enforcement"
May 15, 2006: "Allofmp3 Down - For Good?"
May 30, 2006: "Allofmp3.com running out of time?"
Jul 3, 2006: "BPI gets go-ahead to sue MP3 Site"
Aug 18, 2006: "AllofMp3 suffers mysterious downtime"
Oct 19, 2006: "Credit card firms cut off Allofmp3"
Sept 15, 2006: "Anti-piracy law could shut down Russian music download site"
Nov 28, 2006: "Russia Agrees To US Request To Shut Down AllofMP3"
Dec 21, 2006: "Allofmp3 sued for 1.65 Trillion"
Feb 2, 2007: "Russia to legalize digital content market"
Pretty resilient. But how long will it last? The Nov 28 and Feb 2 articles may actually signal the end.
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Thursday, March 1, 2007
No One Steals 45s
In my post, titled 'How to stop music "stealing" ?', I received two comments:
1) "I don't consider paying for music as stealing"
2) "its legal according to Berne convention administered by the WIPO and WTO requirements."
These responses miss the point of my post. There are moral and legal reasons that obtaining music from Russian entrepreneurs shouldn't be considered stealing. I wasn't arguing whether downloading music from the Russian sites or file-sharing networks is good or bad or even against the law. (I had the word stealing in quotes.)
I was arguing that the music industry could compete more effectively with the Russian Music Sites and file sharing by improving their service. Instead of focusing on threatening the file-sharers with legal trouble, they should give the file-sharers a reason not to use other people’s services.
I wrote:
“1) Online music stores can attach almost everything they want to downloads. Album or song purchases should be attached to tour schedules, artist stories and biographies, videos, games, screensavers, drawings, desktop backgrounds, coupons, anything of interest.
2) Songs files can be made for more than listening. Fans like to interact with their music. What if you could download a song file, and then sing karaoke with it, play the guitar solo from it in Guitar Hero, dance to it in DDR, create your own music video for it, remix it and resell your reproductions. All of these abilities in a single interface.”
The record industry targets file-sharers and the Russian sites because they view them as a threat to their business. But I believe they are making a mistake in allowing their legal team to be their main tool against people swapping tunes. They can and should redefine what selling music means, and produce something that cannot be found elsewhere.
Currently, the record industry offers a worse experience than their Russians competitors. They continue to act as if the Internet is a threat, when it’s really an opportunity.
1) "I don't consider paying for music as stealing"
2) "its legal according to Berne convention administered by the WIPO and WTO requirements."
These responses miss the point of my post. There are moral and legal reasons that obtaining music from Russian entrepreneurs shouldn't be considered stealing. I wasn't arguing whether downloading music from the Russian sites or file-sharing networks is good or bad or even against the law. (I had the word stealing in quotes.)
I was arguing that the music industry could compete more effectively with the Russian Music Sites and file sharing by improving their service. Instead of focusing on threatening the file-sharers with legal trouble, they should give the file-sharers a reason not to use other people’s services.
I wrote:
“1) Online music stores can attach almost everything they want to downloads. Album or song purchases should be attached to tour schedules, artist stories and biographies, videos, games, screensavers, drawings, desktop backgrounds, coupons, anything of interest.
2) Songs files can be made for more than listening. Fans like to interact with their music. What if you could download a song file, and then sing karaoke with it, play the guitar solo from it in Guitar Hero, dance to it in DDR, create your own music video for it, remix it and resell your reproductions. All of these abilities in a single interface.”
The record industry targets file-sharers and the Russian sites because they view them as a threat to their business. But I believe they are making a mistake in allowing their legal team to be their main tool against people swapping tunes. They can and should redefine what selling music means, and produce something that cannot be found elsewhere.
Currently, the record industry offers a worse experience than their Russians competitors. They continue to act as if the Internet is a threat, when it’s really an opportunity.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
June 1, 2007 Deadline for Allofmp3 Shutdown
Update: I replaced inaccurate info about March 15 deadline with accurate info about June 1 deadline.
The U.S. pressure on Russian authorities to target Allofmp3.com appears to be working. I'm no Russian legal expert, and I have absolutely no clue how this will proceed, but it really doesn't matter. At this point, it's almost impossible to load money onto Allofmp3. The question is, if the Russians shutdown Allofmp3, what will happen to the other Russian music sites?
No matter, there are still the Ukranian Sites:
http://www.mp3city.com.ua/
http://mclub.te.net.ua/
http://www.mp3.ua/
Allofmp3 may even join them.
"The agreement is dated November 19 and posted to the Web site for the Office of the United States Trade Representative. It summarizes the joint efforts of the two countries to fight content piracy, an issue known to be centered in Russia and Eastern Europe.
“This agreement sets the stage for further progress on IPR issues in Russia through the next phase of multilateral negotiations, during which the United States and other WTO members will examine Russia’s IPR regime,” states the document.
The document specifically names AllofMP3.com as an example of the types of Web sites that they will shut down. We contacted AllofMP3.com and the company sent us an official statement stating their legality. It says that the company has offered to remove illegal music at the copyright holders’ requests." TechCrunch
The U.S. pressure on Russian authorities to target Allofmp3.com appears to be working. I'm no Russian legal expert, and I have absolutely no clue how this will proceed, but it really doesn't matter. At this point, it's almost impossible to load money onto Allofmp3. The question is, if the Russians shutdown Allofmp3, what will happen to the other Russian music sites?
No matter, there are still the Ukranian Sites:
http://www.mp3city.com.ua/
http://mclub.te.net.ua/
http://www.mp3.ua/
Allofmp3 may even join them.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
New Forum
On my blog and Squidoo lens, discussion is challenging. So, I've created a Russian Mp3 Sites Forum.
Monday, February 19, 2007
What's the deal with Xrost
To load money onto Allofmp3.com, it used to be:
1) Go to http://www.xrost.biz and put money on a card
2) Go to http://account.allofmp3.com/pays/payments.shtml?action=step2&via=xrost
Login and Deposit.
But this message has been up on Xrost.biz for much longer than 48 hours:
" Dear valued customer,
As part of our ongoing effort to improve the payment platform, we will be performing a scheduled server maintenance. The payment option at our site will be restored in 48 hours.
Sincerely, Xrost Team "
Without Xrost, it's hard to load money onto Allofmp3. There are plenty of other Russian Mp3 sites that allow you can use a credit card, but I hope they return.
Anyone know what's going on?
1) Go to http://www.xrost.biz and put money on a card
2) Go to http://account.allofmp3.com/pays/payments.shtml?action=step2&via=xrost
Login and Deposit.
But this message has been up on Xrost.biz for much longer than 48 hours:
" Dear valued customer,
As part of our ongoing effort to improve the payment platform, we will be performing a scheduled server maintenance. The payment option at our site will be restored in 48 hours.
Sincerely, Xrost Team "
Without Xrost, it's hard to load money onto Allofmp3. There are plenty of other Russian Mp3 sites that allow you can use a credit card, but I hope they return.
Anyone know what's going on?
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Beatles Pick AllofMp3.com over iTunes (Satire)
"It's like the President's daughter announcing she will marry Osama Bin Laden." Says RIAA lawyer Hugh Billings. "Allofmp3.com is an outlaw organization with links to organized crime and possible terrorist groups. More importantly, Allofmp3.com doesn't pay any royalties to RIAA members for the use of their copyright materials. Giving Allofmp3.com control of the must lucrative music franchise in history is a mistake, a very big mistake."
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Hi there, I was looking around for some mp3s and found them on alloffmp3.org. I signed up paid my money and when I tried to download it came back with an error saying there was a problem. My immediate thought was that I had be swizzed.
HOWEVER, I later received an email from the service saying there had indeed been a problem and that all had been resolved.
In the meantime I had found your blog while I was looking to see if anyone else was sharing my experiences.
So I logged back in and true to their word the service was up and running so I was happy.
About the service. I am a club DJ and am alway on the look out for the latest tunes and i have been absolutely blown away by what I have found on this site.
Tunes that I can't buy anywhere online or sometimes find in the shops. Even things which to my knowledge are only knocking around on vinyl. This sounds like a blatant advert (which it most definitely is not) but last night I was like a kid in candy shop and managed to find about 85% of all the sought after tracks I have been looking for over the last month.
The search facility is pretty crappy and browsing is not really much of an option. If you know the artists you are looking for, or the exact name of the track you want then this site is great.
They also have a few lists of the latest UK and US charts etc but these don't really demonstrate the depth of what the site seems to have available.
I did find a couple of links which seemed not to work and the interface can get a bit hung up 'encoding' these files but this happened twice out of about 15 downloads.
The listening interface works well and they have adopted a fast-forwarding approach in the sample which will play about 10 seconds fast forward a bit, play some more and so on. This is very helpful, I am always a bit frustrated when the 30 second sample you get on some other site seems to miss out the best or worst parts of the music.
So over all: not that user friendly, found downloads a bit slow, they seem to max out at about 50kbps on my system. I am used to 100-200kbps on some other sites.
This site is all about its content and having used a lot of the mp3 sites I am very happy to have found this one which seems to cater for my particular (non mainstream) tastes really rather well.